I tore into Bonnie yesterday afternoon, and despite only having about three hours before I lost the sunlight, I think I did fairly well. The wire harness and hoses are being a bit intimidating, especially on the rear bank of the engine, but we'll see how it goes.

Engine bay at the start


Parts waiting to go on


Progress so far


I want to get rid of the engine lift brackets on the rear for easier access to the plugs and getting the valve cover off (I'm doing rockers as well) Fells like its going to be tight going back there all around

Oooh shinies! It'll be worth it, nice looking car will have an engine bay to match

Teardown stage is complete, except for pulling the rockers. The rear engine lift brackets were a bit of a pain, but not as bad as the stubborn plug boots. Everything else came apart cleanly and with out fuss (well not too much)

Now time to clean up and paint some other parts to go back on, change out the plugs while they are so easy to get to, and begin re-assembly. When I lay out the new gaskets tomorrow I'll decide if I'm going to pursue the porting clean-up. If so, I'll do that before installing the new rockers. I grabbed one of the rear view mirrors off of my bicycle (LOL) which is working nicely for looking at the back bank (big help locating the lift bracket bolts)

Teardown so far...


A shot of the old parts pile shows the water pump with the impeller we dont want (good call guys) and the inside of the valve cover which thankfully were not filled with sludge. The Dex which has poured out hasnt looked cloudy and aside from some gunk around the coolant ports, everything else seems fairly clean. Nice to know Bonnie wasnt in critical health before all this began.

oooooh shiney parts! hows it feel to tear into the engine and adding nice parts? what wires are you going with?

MSD coils and wires,

Have you not heard all the bad things about MSD coils?

You should have gone with an Intense FWI.

All kidding aside, plenty of people have had problems with the MSD coils and switched back to stock, just FYI.

tim, just paint your stock coils red. plenty of people have had problems, but others havent. its more of a hit n miss kind of deal. hope you have better luck than others have.

Another vote to skip the coils.

Progress at the end of day 3


Powerlog, ported LIM, Yella Terra roller 1.7s and new water pump in place...a few more parts painted in prep for install.

Starting to look like an engine again

*drool!* Gawtamn! That's one sharp looking mill, good man! Where'd you get that filler cap?

ebay sir richard….

anyways, tim, its weird seeing those engine bay's, so much more room than in a gp its not even funny. where are the supports for the upper half of the engine? sorry for the noob questions, just never dealt with a bonne before.

Different mount system on the Bonnie...no dogbones, but the front "hockey puck" mount is notorious for splitting if any serious power is applied to it. Many different mods have been tried, but the most widely used is a solid rubber block with a thru-bolt for strength.

The engine bay looks roomy now with the upper rad support off, but it does have slightly more room than the GP...I would absolutely LOVE to drop the LS4 mill in there...plenty enough space and that sweet V8 growl!

well shoot, if youve got the money and the room for it, do it! haha that would be an awesome upgrade.

Yes it would be, but no funds for that kind of thing right now...plus I would need someone who is a wizard on the electrical stuff since the LS4 has drive-by-wire plus other system issues that would have to be tackled (might be less headache to just sell and grab a GXP!)